FAIRBORN — After meeting with citizens and receiving a number of complaints regarding the amount of litter spread throughout the City of Fairborn, Mayor Dan Kirkpatrick went to work and found a solution that could involve everyone.

“We have 32,000 citizens in Fairborn,” Kirkpatrick said. “If even just 1,000 of them went out there and picked up a bag of litter, think of how much cleaner the city would be.”

The city will hosts its first Fairborn Clean-Up Day on Saturday, in which citizens can grab a trash bag, select a spot within the city and start picking up litter. Kirkpatrick said it was purposefully unorganized.

“It was the citizens idea, it’s citizen-driven, nothing the city is formally doing,” he said. “Citizens saw a problem, the citizens came up with a solution to the problem, and we’re hoping this year to get a lot of citizens out in helping solve that problem.”

If citizens take a photo of themselves holding their bag of litter, they could receive a free flag from Military Flags, Gifts and More, located at 4 W. Main St. To do so, they would need to present the photo to the flag store. Flag Day takes place the following Sunday, and Kirkpatrick hopes to also fill the city with planted flags across citizens’ yards.

“The catchy phrase they came up with was ‘fill a bag, plant a flag,’” he said. “We’re hoping to get a lot of flags out there for Flag Day, and at the same time get a lot of litter cleaned up throughout Fairborn.”

Fairborn Clean-Up Day has the possibility of becoming an annual event, depending on how its first event goes. He said it could be held at the beginning and the end of the summer season each year.

“I’m very impressed at our citizens,” Kirkpatrick said. “We hope it helps cleanup the city.”